The Togs Runoff Channel

What Everyone Knows

The channel runs beneath the gemwork stalls and the old tanning tunnels, carrying gear-oil runoff and rainwater out past the Market's edge. It's shallow in most places, deep enough to drown a careless drunk in others, and it has, on more than one recorded occasion, been used to dispose of something its owner would rather the Triad never see.
  That never works. I documented one such attempt myself, not long ago, and the Sänä had the culprits within a week.

What Almost Nobody Knows

The channel isn't merely watched by informants and careful eyes, the way the rest of the Market is. It's wired, in a manner I still don't fully understand, to the Yuel map itself. Something about the water's movement, or perhaps something living in it, carries information back to the Sänä faster than any human witness could run to report it.
  I asked a retired Sänä agent about this directly. She confirmed the channel behaves differently from ordinary water, without confirming precisely how, and grew noticeably less willing to keep talking the longer I pressed.
  What she did tell me, before ending the conversation entirely, was this: the channel has been part of Market law longer than the current Triad has held power. Older than Iyl-Tandril's grandfather's grandfather, by her account. Whatever was done to make that water report on wrongdoing wasn't done recently, and wasn't done by anyone currently living to ask.
  I've gone looking for older Triad records explaining the channel's true nature. I haven't found them. Either they were never written down, or they were, and somebody with more authority than a historian decided they shouldn't stay findable.
  I intend to keep looking. I'd like to know what's actually listening down there before I next need to cross that bridge at night.
  I've since started choosing the longer route around whenever I can manage it, which costs me nearly twenty minutes and considerable pride. A historian ought to want to know things. I find I want to know this particular thing from a safe distance, preferably in daylight, preferably with someone else standing closer to the water than I am.
  I mention all this not to frighten you off Togs entirely, since the gemwork stalls there are genuinely worth the visit. I mention it so that the next time you cross that little bridge and feel watched by something other than the usual Market eyes, you'll know enough not to dismiss the feeling outright.